Grace Gillespie Carter

GRACE GILLESPIE CARTER

Fairfield

Grace Gillespie Carter, 69, of Fairfield, died Friday,

June 4, 2021, in Hospice at

her home.

A private funeral was held Monday at Behner Funeral Home in Fairfield and a Requiem Mass was held Saturday at St. Gabriel and All Angels Church in Fairfield.

A memorial service is at

7 p.m. Wednesday at the 1006A Prairie Lakes Drive.

Grace was born May 5, 1952, in New Haven, Connecticut, the daughter of Irene Katherine Parker and Malcolm Gillespie. She was the first of two children.

In 1957 her family moved to Carbondale, Illinois, and then to Yellow Springs, Ohio, in 1967.

After high school, she attended Wilmington College in Wilmington, Ohio, and graduated from Antioch College with a B.A. in literature.

In 1973, she learned the TM program. Several years later, she attended a TM Teacher Training Course in France and taught TM in Dayton, Ohio, for eight years.

In 1984, she moved to Fairfield, Iowa, where she was self-employed doing editing and word processing.

In 1994, she met Paul Carter, her husband of 22 years, and they were married in 1998 in Yellow Springs, Ohio, by her father, a minister in the United Church of Christ.

In 1999, she joined Surya Financial Group and worked there as a legal secretary for 18 years until her retirement in 2016.

Grace's favorite pastime was writing. In 2014, she published her first novel, City of Three Rivers, and recently finished her second novel, Two and One, which is soon to be published.

She was a member of the Liberal Catholic Church and also an ordained minister in Divine Mother Church of Fairfield.

Survivors include her husband, Paul; her brother, Allan Gillespie of Eugene, Oregon; and her nephews, Cimmaron Gillespie, also of Eugene, and Shane Gillespie of Columbus, Ohio.

She was preceded in death by her parents.